When the British Columbia Hockey League champion meets the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion for the Doyle Cup in April it'll mark the end of an era for the way junior A hockey selects its RBC Cup teams.
Starting in 2013 the four Western Canadian provinces and junior A leagues - B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba - will send a league champion, plus a host, to the newly created Western Canadian Championship (WCC). The inaugural contest will be hosted in Nanaimo from April 26 to May 5, 2013.
"It'll create a true champion in the west," said Mike Hawes, general manager of the Prince George Spruce Kings. "It's a championship that will determine the two best teams in Western Canada and for all intents and purposes it could be two B.C. teams."
The top two teams at the tentatively named Western Canadian Championship will advance to the RBC Cup. The new format replaces the Doyle Cup, which pitted the BCHL winner against the AJHL winner and the Anavet Cup, which set the top teams in the SJHL and MJHL against each other for a berth in the national championship.
"It was an opportunity to provide a playing field for the western teams, instead of BC always having to play off against Alberta and Saskatchewan against Manitoba," said John Grisdale, BCHL commissioner. "[We tried] to get a format where you'd get a chance to play somebody different from time to time."
The WCC will feature a 13-game round-robin tournament followed by two semifinal games and a championship game. After Nanaimo hosts the first championship, it will be followed by an MJHL team in 2014, an AJHL team in 2015 and a SJHL team in 2016.
"It was important from my perspective [that the BCHL is] the first host and it worked out because we were the last western league to host the RBC in Victoria," said Grisdale. "We wanted it for our league so I said we would do it and we would make it successful and create a blueprint that others can follow."
